Post by PandoraGreen on Aug 5, 2005 12:55:03 GMT -5
Just finished Suikoden IV for the PS2. For some inexplicable reason, I played through it twice, even though it was a truly lack-luster game. The previous games in this series were excellent. SO much so that, regrettably, I went out and bought IV at launch without first renting it.
10 minutes with a rental copy would have saved me a good chunk of change. The graphics are sub-par. The voice acting is retched. The cut scenes are chock full of mood-breaking lengthy loading screens. The plot is pretty much non-existent. At several key points in the game the only way you figure out what to do next is to look at the map of the world and see where the little blue arrow is telling you to go... with no clue as to WHY you would be going there story-wise.
The previous Suikoden games have always had a rather dark-story line with an underlying theme of the fact that war is both ugly and deadly.
The main character is a blank-faced idiot. He has a constant large eyed totally blank look on his face, regardless of how exciting, or earth-shattering the current events are. Supposedly this is to allow you to impose your own emotional responses on the character. Certainly didn't work for me.
The limited speech options the game gives you are ridiculous. Usually there are two options, the obviously correct option, and the blatantly stupid, insulting, or suicidal one. Or the two options are just close rewordings of the same choice, and whichever one you pick the same result ensues.
And I haven't even touched on the main flaw with the game... The ridiculously high fight frequency. The fight frequency was (utterly without exaggeration!) approximately 1 fight every 10-15 seconds. Also, there were a series of main bad-guy fights which took place out to sea. Once you had between the set story-line fight vs each monster, it would then appear as a random fight. These "main" random fights were so long and tedious, they would actually take over 10 minutes to fight through. They weren't difficult per say, just extremely lengthy, tedious and boring. It almost seemed like a game flaw to run into these main bad-guys as random fights.
I really missed the "iron chef" mini game, which was present in the previous Suikoden games but not in this one.
Overall this game didn't live up to the franchise. Poor production quality, lack of story line etc. This version of Suikoden fell so short of the mark set by it's predecessors that it felt as though the developers had sold it off to someone else.
Still present were the myriad sub-quests to collect "all 108 stars of destiny". (which is what had me playing the game through twice.) The game is remarkably short. I'm guessing about 30 hours, less if you ignore side quests.
Basically, not worth the output. If you happen to find it dirt cheap, or you're a diehard fan of the series pick it up, otherwise avoid at all costs.
10 minutes with a rental copy would have saved me a good chunk of change. The graphics are sub-par. The voice acting is retched. The cut scenes are chock full of mood-breaking lengthy loading screens. The plot is pretty much non-existent. At several key points in the game the only way you figure out what to do next is to look at the map of the world and see where the little blue arrow is telling you to go... with no clue as to WHY you would be going there story-wise.
The previous Suikoden games have always had a rather dark-story line with an underlying theme of the fact that war is both ugly and deadly.
The main character is a blank-faced idiot. He has a constant large eyed totally blank look on his face, regardless of how exciting, or earth-shattering the current events are. Supposedly this is to allow you to impose your own emotional responses on the character. Certainly didn't work for me.
The limited speech options the game gives you are ridiculous. Usually there are two options, the obviously correct option, and the blatantly stupid, insulting, or suicidal one. Or the two options are just close rewordings of the same choice, and whichever one you pick the same result ensues.
And I haven't even touched on the main flaw with the game... The ridiculously high fight frequency. The fight frequency was (utterly without exaggeration!) approximately 1 fight every 10-15 seconds. Also, there were a series of main bad-guy fights which took place out to sea. Once you had between the set story-line fight vs each monster, it would then appear as a random fight. These "main" random fights were so long and tedious, they would actually take over 10 minutes to fight through. They weren't difficult per say, just extremely lengthy, tedious and boring. It almost seemed like a game flaw to run into these main bad-guys as random fights.
I really missed the "iron chef" mini game, which was present in the previous Suikoden games but not in this one.
Overall this game didn't live up to the franchise. Poor production quality, lack of story line etc. This version of Suikoden fell so short of the mark set by it's predecessors that it felt as though the developers had sold it off to someone else.
Still present were the myriad sub-quests to collect "all 108 stars of destiny". (which is what had me playing the game through twice.) The game is remarkably short. I'm guessing about 30 hours, less if you ignore side quests.
Basically, not worth the output. If you happen to find it dirt cheap, or you're a diehard fan of the series pick it up, otherwise avoid at all costs.